Norfolk Canyon 10/5/13

Well, yesterday was one of my more frustrating fishing days. Not one of the worst; nobody got hurt, the boat ran great, and we did not break anything important but dang was it irritating. We did not catch a tuna. We spent the day at the Norfolk Canyon with tuna being caught around us all day. Typical catch was 6-12 longfin, some dolphin, and maybe a wahoo or a white marlin. We started out catching dolphin. Not off of a buoy or anything, they just came in and ate everything…several times. We had a decent catch of dolphin then we lost a couple right at the boat, and then another one was gaffed and then flipped overboard as it was going into the box. No big deal, we had plenty and it was early in the morning. It was the last fish we caught all day. There was a fairly steady pick of albacore tuna by the boats around us. Watched a couple gaffed and landed on the same baits we were using. We had one hooked up on the green bar but pulled the hook. That was it. Later, a green stick boat called me on the radio. He had a bad day at the Washington and was trolling to the Norfolk. Asked if I had any pilot whales. I told him that they were a ways off of my bow and that I was trolling to them. He followed me to them and from sunset til dark, he caught 3 yellowfin and 2 big eyes, right on the north wall of the canyon. He said his first bigeye was about 225 pounds. There are tuna at the canyon, of various color, but we sure could not catch them. We did get visited by some white marlin. We had a couple of bites on the left side and then there was another on our shortrigger bait on the right side. We had a dink pitch bait ready just for this. We did not execute the bait and switch very well. We were also visited by wahoo. We had a big hoo come up and just look at that same short rigger bait but did not bite it. Later, we put a planer down and that got bitten off. We even put out a Clark spoon to see if we could catch a baby tuna for Dr. Graves. We could not even catch a baby. We were very good and not catching tuna in a canyon full of the things.